consequence of such a system, pursued with relentless pertinacity for 250 years? This: that, debarred from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung itself back upon "the land" with as fatal an impulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilized.[1]
For a long time, however, the limits of their own island proved sufficient for the three or four millions which then inhabited it. The cheapness of provisions in Ireland used to be the bugbear of the English manufacturer. But each successive century found the nation more straitened within its borders. At last a choice had to be made between the sacrifice of domestic happiness or of physical comfort; the natural liveliness of their affections, combined with a buoyant temperament, led the
- ↑ In 1836, the Royal Commissioners for inquiring into the Condition of the Poor in Ireland, reported
"That they could not estimate the number of persons in Ireland out of work and in distress during the thirty weeks of the year at less than 585,000, nor the persons dependent on them at less than 1,800,000, making 2,385,000."
"The estimate of these Commissioners received a singular but sad corroboration nine years afterwards, in the fact I have already noticed, of 3,000,000 of persons being in receipt of rations under the relief arrangements at one period during the height of the famine in 1847. It receives a further corroboration in the reduction of the population by two millions and a-half by emigration. It was the extraordinary productiveness of the potato before 1846, which enabled those 2,385,000 persons to exist, with only half work, even in the wretched condition they did."—Dr. Hancock's Alleged Decline, &c.
